Down To The Bone
by andibeth82
Summary: James and Kate reconciling post-Island, dealing with feelings and a lot of memories. James POV. Friendships that last through time-space continuums and chopper jumps. Vague references to Outlaws and some other random early episodes, general references to The Incident and The End.


_Feather moon_  
_Scarlet sky_  
_Living clouds the blinded eye_  
_Waters black_  
_Wood in snow_  
_Dead of night how bright you glow_  
_Breathe in, breathe out_  
_Inhale, exhale"_

_- Vienna Teng, Feather Moon_

* * *

There's a small bookstore down the street from his new apartment, where Carrie figures prominently on the fiction shelf along with Emily Bronte. The first time he comes across it he ends up on his knees in the bathroom, his body rejecting the realization of her loss the same way it once rejected the act of killing the man who had ruined his life and it's a hard habit to break, he thinks, this constant feeling of pain_._

Used to lie for a living.

Sawyer scoffed at pain, buffeted it with hard sarcasm and a closed off demeanor. LaFleur understood pain, managed it with advice and understanding. James hated pain, used fronts to hide behind it but those fronts are gone now, shells of his former self scattered somewhere between 2004 and 1977. And in 2007, James Ford doesn't have anything to left to hide behind.

He eats alone, drinks alone, drives alone, does most things alone because it's what he's used to. He finds a bar a few blocks from the diner he frequents and stays for five hours the first day, four the second and the third. He knows his actions are predictable so when she shows up he's not all that surprised but _it don't make it any easier_ (his way of greeting as she slides into the seat next to him and stares down his shot of patron.)

"Hell of a drink."

"Get lost."

"James. Don't." And it's her voice he hears as he wrenches away, small strands of pain pulling taut somewhere along his chest.

"You saw him one last time." There's a moment where she looks visibly uncomfortable (a feat, he notes, as they have enough history together that nothing should be uncomfortable) before she moves closer to his chair.

"Last time I saw Jack…" she trails off, clears her throat. "The cliff. That was the last time."

"Yeah, well." Narrow eyes, fingers hard against the table and then two short beats like a silent drum. "Least the Doc wasn't dyin' in your arms." The sarcasm isn't lost in translation and there's silence for a few moments, then a hand on top of his own. He tries to imagine that it's her touch on his skin but there's too much of a difference, and he knows what she feels like too well to pretend with someone else.

(He pulled that con for years, stopped pretending the day she took an interest in his goddamn affairs and he ain't Sawyer now any more than he's James LaFleur, trusted leader, well-meaning boyfriend.)

_Used to lie for a living. _

"Do you want me to stay?" and their eyes meet, hers a mirror image of his pain. He looks down, closes his eyes.

"No."

It feels strange to reject her, the one person who might just know better than anyone what the hell he's going through (_Miles don't get it, Claire don't get it_) and what was it he said to her once? _The only other person on this Island who just don't belong._

Because that's the funny thing about the real world, lots of people out there who just don't belong, lots of people who have lost someone and yet his pain seems to stick out among everyone else's like a sore fucking thumb.

He doesn't look up again until she leaves.

* * *

For the most part, his days are routine – Clementine is a requisite presence Sundays and Mondays while Tuesdays are lunch with Cassidy, every apology and small smile another notch on the belt of amends. _It's what she would've wanted_. The rest of the week he works odd jobs so as not to go completely broke and it's the most stable and mundane his life has been since 1977, a fact he realizes one night while staring down another plate of Chinese take-out.

"Do you need a hug?"

_I need more than a hug_ and shit, file that one under another instance of "things you can't say to a five year old." He drops her off just after eight and drives home the long way, sits in bed and cracks a beer, finds himself staring at the black handle of the phone receiver.

Picks it up.

Dials her number.

* * *

She arrives with a face hidden behind massive dark shades, curly brown hair pulled back tight. He runs a hand through his own unruly strands, the ones that shadow the lined parts of his face and wants to ask why she's still hiding when they got nothing to hide from anymore but thinks better of it.

Years ago, he would've demanded to know everything. But the things that once seemed worth it don't seem so important anymore.

"Didn't think you'd want to see me."

"Changed my mind." The thick, oversized pages of the diner menu obscure his face and he pretends to be interested in turkey sandwiches as she puts down her bag. _She always liked turkey._ "So, you still seein' Aaron or what?"

There's a pause, long enough for him to almost meet her gaze, but she answers before he can let down his literal guard.

"Aaron spends most of his time with Claire. It's better that way." Her voice is quiet and he finally does put down the menu, regarding her carefully through tinted sunglasses.

"Is it?"

The waiter interrupts to bring coffee and they get on a tangent about jobs, about Los Angeles traffic and the weather, he calls her Kate but never Freckles and lets her call him Sawyer because he knows his real name still feels strange on her tongue. They talk until its two hours and three cups of coffee later and it's only then he realizes they've talked about everything from the sky to the moon.

They've talked about everything except the goddamn Island and the two people they left behind to die.

* * *

Three weeks into November, she shows up at his door with pizza in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. They watch bad movies together in silence and drown their unspoken sorrows with the help of tiny bottles, sometimes he thinks about touching her just to have a body against his own that's not entirely phantom (catches her looking every so often and wonders if she's thinking the same.)

"We played this once." She says the words slowly as she gets up to leave and he stands with her, surveys the mess of empty bottles while remembering a campfire, secrets and boars and whispers.

_I never been in love. _"Yeah. We did. Ain't it funny, how long ago that feels?"

She shrugs a little listlessly. "I guess sometimes I don't think it feels all that long ago," and the way she looks at him makes him wonder if that's what she still sees, the con man with the attitude and _tiger don't change its stripes_ and _you want to be hated_. He studies the floor before he speaks.

"You ever get mad at the Doc? After everythin'?" The question seems to catch her off guard, and for a moment, he's not sure whether she's going to answer.

"I was. When it happened, I mean. I was angry. Angry that he chose to stay because I couldn't…I couldn't understand why." She pauses and stares at something indiscernible on the far side of the room. "But I guess I do now."

James pushes one toe against the floor, it's the most she's talked about Jack since they came back and a hell of a lot more than he's ever talked about Juliet.

"Yeah. Me too."

She looks up then and he sees the tears, but knows that they aren't for him any more than his are for her. He watches as she picks up an empty bottle of Absolut and rolls it sadly in her palm.

"I'm sorry," and when she finally speaks again, her voice just above a murmur. "I know how much you loved her."

_Loved. _Like it was all just a dream (hell, maybe it was), another reminder that everything in this damn present is nothing but past tense. He laughs a little, his chuckle mingling with choked tears, mostly because it seems absurd that if there's one person who understands how much all this hurts, it's her.

_I never been in love. You've never been in love. I ain't drinking, am I?_

(He's too old for that now.)

"You got your ghosts, I got mine. Ain't no games to play anymore, Kate."

They end the night with a hug and a forced smile, he walks her to the door and realizes neither of them really know what this is except for the fact that he wants Juliet and she wants Jack and right now, they're the next best thing each other's got.

* * *

Two weeks into December and Cassidy is called out of town unexpectedly, leaving James with a literal pile of baggage and a daughter who tugs on his hands asking if she can sleep in his bed. Kate calls while he's making dinner but he ignores the ringing phone, concentrates on limp pasta noodles and meat sauce and tries to think of happier times, of cooking dinner before six and the day he walked through the door with a yellow flower, and that time he carried her over the threshold just because.

_"Shouldn't dare a man to show you chivalry, Blondie. He just might call your bluff."_

(Funny thing is, for all his worry about fighting monsters and demons, it's his daughter who sleeps soundly through the night while his own nightmares keep him awake.)

She's in and out of town for the next few weeks and one day, just after lunch, comes back around with a black bag but without her trademark sunglasses. She tells him she's getting away for awhile, watches his face and he figures she's daring him to make some sort of crack about her running. But he won't, not now, mostly because he's got no room to talk.

He's doing his own running. He just ain't leaving Los Angeles to do so.

"I'm not sure when I'll be back," she says as she pulls him into a hug and he figures it might be the first honest to god thing she's ever said in the entire time he's known her. "But if you're here, I'll look you up." She pauses, looking down quickly before pulling away. "I'll look you both up."

_What do you want, Sawyer?_

James closes the door, stares from a spot at the window that he knows she can't see and thinks of how it's almost winter, because she always liked winter, even if there wasn't any winter in Dharmaville.

_"One day, we're gonna celebrate Christmas. An' we'll get drunk on some egg nog and good wine and dance real good when we get tipsy."_

He watches the car as it speeds down the road and feels something inside of him shatter, something that's either breaking or healing.

(He can't tell which one.)

* * *

_It'll get easier._

That's what she had said back in the seventies on the first anniversary of his parent's murder-suicide, the day she found him kicking the crap out of a van she had spent hours repairing the day before. He didn't want to believe her and so he never answered, not until the next year rolled around and he realized that thinking of his past didn't hurt quite so much. He had taken the moment to apologize, stupid as it had seemed 365 days after the fact.

_"Sorry about your van."_

_"Don't be silly, James." (Poe, that day she was reading Poe, her hair was piled on top of her head in straight braids and he jokingly called her Princess Leia.) "It was just a van."_

He goes to the bar less and spends time with his daughter more, finds himself repeating the mantra over and over again in his head. _It'll get easier._ Every few weeks postcards arrive in the mail, over saturated pictures of brown mountains and blue rivers with scripted words like Wyoming and Montana written in white on the corners of the plastic and he hangs them on the refrigerator in a neat straight line with magnets from the dollar store.

_It'll get easier._

He relives moments of only real life he ever knew, writes down memories as they come to him in a small lined notebook and uses words to paint the pictures he never had a chance to collect. The feeling in his chest comes and goes, depending on the day (depending on the mood) and sometimes, late at night, he finds himself staring out the window looking for the telltale sign of headlights from her black sedan. He plays a game of I Never while he waits and mentally takes a drink every time.

_I never been in love._

And then one day, some weeks into spring, the phone rings (once, twice) and an instinctual hand floats above the receiver while his daughter sings lullabies to herself in the next room.

_catch a falling star and put it in your pocket._

He lets it ring and waits for a voicemail that never comes.

It's the last time she calls.


End file.
